Informed choice: the essential ingredient of learner-centred education Dylan Wiliam

Raising achievement matters For individuals  Increased lifetime salary  Improved health  Longer life  Greater control For society  Lower criminal justice costs  Lower health-care costs  Increased economic growth  Increased pro-social behaviour

Raising achievement matters… Which of the following categories of skill is disappearing from the work- place most rapidly? 1.Routine manual 2.Non-routine manual 3.Routine cognitive 4.Complex communication 5.Expert thinking/problem-solving

…but what is learnt also matters… Autor, Levy & Murnane, 2003

…now more than ever

The only 21st century skill So the model that says learn while you’re at school, while you’re young, the skills that you will apply during your lifetime is no longer tenable. The skills that you can learn when you’re at school will not be applicable. They will be obsolete by the time you get into the workplace and need them, except for one skill. The one really competitive skill is the skill of being able to learn. It is the skill of being able not to give the right answer to questions about what you were taught in school, but to make the right response to situations that are outside the scope of what you were taught in school. We need to produce people who know how to act when they’re faced with situations for which they were not specifically prepared. (Papert, 1998)

Where’s the solution? Structure  Small secondary schools  Larger secondary schools Alignment  Curriculum reform  Textbook replacement Governance  Vouchers and charter schools (US)  Specialist schools, trusts and academies (UK) Technology  Computers  Interactive white-boards

School effectiveness Three generations of school effectiveness research  Raw results approaches  Different schools get different results  Conclusion: Schools make a difference  Demographic-based approaches  Demographic factors account for most of the variation  Conclusion: Schools don’t make a difference  Value-added approaches  School-level differences in value-added are relatively small  Classroom-level differences in value-added are large  Conclusion: An effective school is a school full of effective classrooms

Informed choice About what to learn (Curriculum) About how to learn (Pedagogy) Degree of choice should be influenced by  Consequences (for the individual and for society)  Maturity Consequences of choices (and especially poor choices) about what is to be learned are generally greater than choices about how learning should be achieved, so  For younger learners, many if not most learning outcomes need to be non- negotiable. As they get older their wishes should become predominate their interests (progressive lowering of the “safety net”)  From the earliest age, however, learners should be involved in decisions about how they learn best.

The test of successful education is not the amount of knowledge that a pupil takes away from school, but his appetite to know and his capacity to learn. If the school sends out children with the desire for knowledge and some idea how to acquire it, it will have done its work. Too many leave school with the appetite killed and the mind loaded with undigested lumps of information. The good schoolmaster is known by the number of valuable subjects which he declines to teach. (Sir Richard Livingstone, President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 1941) Curriculum: a selection from culture  Balanced  Rigorous  Vertically integrated  Internally consistent  Focused Principles of curriculum design

Informed choice about curriculum Intrinsic factors  What is the subject really like?  Authenticity of experience  Habits of mind  Developing identity (e.g., mathematics, plumbing) Extrinsic factors  “Critical filters” for particular careers  Financial rewards Consequences  Closing down of options (“leaky pipes”)  Sensitive periods

Informed choice in mathematics The alternating harmonic series Torricelli’s trumpet Euler’s relation F + V = E + 2 Goldbach’s conjecture

Informed choice about pedagogy Two extremes  Teachers doing the learning for the learners  Teachers “facilitating learning” Key concept  Teachers do not create learning  Learners create learning  But all teachers can do is teach (learning vs. teaching) Teaching is the engineering of effective learning environments Key features of effective learning environments:  Create student engagement (pedagogies of engagement)  Well-regulated (pedagogies of contingency)  Develop habits of mind (pedagogies of formation)

Why pedagogies of engagement? Intelligence is partly inherited  So what? Intelligence is partly environmental  Environment creates intelligence  Intelligence creates environment Learning environments  High cognitive demand  Inclusive  Obligatory

Motivation: cause or effect? competence challenge Flow apathy boredom relaxation arousal anxiety worry control high low high (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990)

Why pedagogies of contingency? InterventionExtra months of learning per year Cost/yr Class-size reduction (by 30%)4£20k Increase teacher content knowledge from weak to strong 2? Formative assessment/ Assessment for learning 8£2k

Unpacking formative assessment Key processes  Establishing where the learners are in their learning  Establishing where they are going  Working out how to get there Participants  Teachers  Peers  Learners

Aspects of formative assessment Where the learner is going Where the learner isHow to get there Teacher Clarify and share learning intentions Engineering effective discussions, tasks and activities that elicit evidence of learning Providing feedback that moves learners forward Peer Understand and share learning intentions Activating students as learning resources for one another Learner Understand learning intentions Activating students as owners of their own learning

…and one big idea Use evidence about learning to adapt teaching and learning to meet student needs

Keeping Learning on Track (KLT) A pilot guides a plane or boat toward its destination by taking constant readings and making careful adjustments in response to wind, currents, weather, etc. A KLT teacher does the same:  Plans a carefully chosen route ahead of time (in essence building the track)  Takes readings along the way  Changes course as conditions dictate

Summary Learning power is developed more by how—than by what—we teach Teaching is the engineering of effective learning environments Effective learning environments involve  Pedagogies of engagement  Pedagogies of contingency  Personalisation  Mass customization (rather than mass production or individualisation)  Diversity  A valuable teaching resource (rather than a challenge to be minimized) Assessment is the bridge between teaching and learning, and thus the central process of teaching (as opposed to lecturing).